


Waiting

by aurilly



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juliet goes to Richard for answers in the 70s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting

Juliet stands calmly in a circle of strangers, twenty guns pointed at her head. The ringleader, a blonde who reminds Juliet uncannily of herself, yells, “Richard! Someone’s here to see you.”

There’s a pause that feels longer than it is, and Juliet shuts her eyes and exhales, even though she’s finally about to see what she’s come all this way to find. By the time she opens them again, he’s there, his gaze entirely on her, enveloping her the way it always did, and always will.

“She was prowling by the temple entrance. Demanded we take her to you,” the blonde informs him, oozing hostility.

Richard registers the words, but continues to focus on Juliet as if he knows her, as if he’s experiencing this moment in the same way she is. But then…

“Can I help you?” The words are polite, with nothing more meaningful than polite inquiry to a stranger behind them.

The illusion shatters. Her heart would break if it hadn’t been broken too many times already. As it is, the tape holding the pieces precariously together merely peels back a bit.

Time travel as a concept is a lot easier to accept when it isn’t actually happening. It’s supposed to work the way the movies describe it; thirty years are supposed to be the difference between hoop skirts and high tops, between clock towers that work and ones that don’t, between actors and presidents. Time is measured by what changes, not by what stays the same.

Like the island, Richard looks the same as he ever did---every hair, every line, the hard smile that fails to hide the kindness behind his eyes. He looks no different here than Miles and James and Jin do; the only difference is that they remember, and he doesn’t.

Right now, the combination of time travel and immortality is looking a lot like a magical mind wipe. All three tropes are impossible, fictional devices, but Juliet prefers the latter; it’s easier to retain the hope that she can somehow fix him, somehow _make_ him remember, than to resign herself to the fact there is nothing to remember, that it’s all in her head.

Time travel gives a new kind of weight to delusions.

He’s still staring at her, a silent order to identify herself, to come back to the now, whenever now is.

“What lies in the shadow of the statue?” she asks, in Latin. But knowing what something translates to isn’t the same as knowing what it means. She doesn’t know the answer. All she knows is that, for whatever reason, this phrase inspires trust in the heart of an Alpert.

“Ille qui nos omnes servabit,” he mutters, robotically, and again, the Latin he taught her tells her nothing, not that she cares. All that matters is that he’s finally looking at her like she matters, even though it remains not enough.

A man in the crowd steps forward. “I remember this woman. Twenty years ago. I almost cut off her hand. She hasn’t aged a day. She’s one of them.”

Always. Always one of someone else.

Juliet flips her hair as she turns to give the interloper the full weight of her unconcerned glare. “Nice to see you again, too, Charles. And you, too, Tom.”

Young Tom, who today doesn’t know her from Adam, simply looks bemused, but the unshameable Charles Widmore, who knows she shouldn’t know his name, is cowed into silence. Juliet knows how to do it; she’s learned from the best---he’s standing right in front of her.

For the first time, she wonders who taught Richard how to be Richard. She technically knows, but it’s another question she can answer without understanding the meaning of the word. _Jacob_ , she remembers, a name always whispered in darkness, hot and guilty and strange. Jacob, to all intents and purposes an invisible man, an imaginary friend---existing only in Richard’s head in the same way Richard now exists only in hers.

They’re on the same page as ever, even if he doesn’t know it, yet. As if on cue (she stops herself from mouthing the words along with him; that would be rude), “Did Jacob send you?”

“I sent myself.”

“Come.” Richard stretches out a hand and, out of habit, out of need, she takes it.

He leads her to his tent, always the nicest, no matter what camp they’re in. Some things (too many things) never change.

He motions her to take a seat on one of the two stumps decorating the ‘reception area’. “You came here a few weeks ago with James Ford, didn’t you?”

“I came to now with them, yes. But if you’re asking how I came to the island, no.”

He smiles, tilting his head and giving her his most patient smile. “I suppose I should ask how you came to the island then.”

“You brought me.”

Richard blinks, a flash of luxurious black. “I think I would remem---”

“You haven’t done it yet.”

She considers asking him not to. She considers nipping it all in the bud, staying in Miami, twisting under Edmund’s thumb, watching Rachel die…

No.

As if reading her mind (he always could; it may or may not have been another trope, another ludicrous superpower), he asks, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I was hoping you could tell me how we can go home, go back to our own time.”

His voice is light when he responds, “I know as little about all of this as you do, as I did when you were here 20 years ago. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“What about Jacob? Would he know? Can you ask him?”

Richard’s forehead furrows, but still doesn’t show any lines. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“I know. But I figured it was worth a shot.” That was always the answer, and still is, or more precisely, has always been the answer and will always be the answer.

“Are you… Ford didn’t know about Jacob. Do I take it that you were… will be… one of us? Is that why I brought you here?”

“Not exactly why. But yes, I was one of you,” she lies. She was never one of the collective them, not part of the cult headed by Ben. But she was one with him, whether he knows it or not. She considers asking to join them again, staying with him, giving him new memories since there’s nothing for him to remember.

But she knows she can’t, or at least that she won’t. No one ever let on about remembering her; Richard and Tom may have been able to keep the secret, but not Joan or Cedric, or Bonnie (whom she’s pretty sure was the little girl she spotted a few minutes ago), so she must not have stayed here. Faraday’s theory has to be right; it’s the only way she can conceptualize all of this without having her head explode. And given that she was recently hemorrhaging from the nose, she’d like to prevent that, if possible.

So instead, since there’s nothing to be gained by sitting here except more pain, it’s another goodbye. Juliet stands up. “Well, let me know if you ever find something out. We’ll be in the Dharma camp.”

She’s halfway out the door, ready to brush by hostile blondie and start the long hike back to the barracks, when she feels his hand on her elbow, pulling her back. Juliet closes her eyes and lets him do it.

It’s a slippery slope, always has been.

“Wait,” he says.


End file.
